Everybody loves Raymond

Raymond Chandler wrote like the quintessential man's man. His novels, such as The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely, gave us hardboiled gumshoe Philip Marlowe chasing bad guys and consorting with dangerous dames, and doing it all in some of the most colorful, first-person-narrative verbal fillips ever created. With that in mind, editor Martin Asher has pulled together Philip Marlowe's Guide to...

Finding your inner author

A. Alvarez's The Writer's Voice is a relatively brief but concentrated exegesis in which the noted poet, novelist and literary critic addresses an advanced area of the writer's challenge. "For a writer," Alvarez states, "voice is a problem that never lets you go, and I have thought about it for as long as I can remember if for no other reason than that a writer doesn't properly begin until he...

Advice from the pros

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is a journalist, editor, creative writing instructor and host of a weekly Southern California radio program called "Writers on Writing." Drawing upon her professional experiences and the wisdom of many best-selling writers, she has produced Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman's Guide to Igniting the Writer Within. This inspirational handbook is filled with smart counsel for both...

Instant inspiration

Chris Baty is the founder of National Novel Writing Month (a.k.a. NaNoWriMo), a six-year-old literary contest that began on a whim in the Bay Area and now involves thousands of participants nationally every year. How does it work? Simple all one needs do is craft a 50,000-word novel in a month's time. It sounds a little kooky, but in fact there's probably a huge upside to this hardcore,...

A celebration of language

Richard Lederer is a language maven. He's written 30 books on the subject, has a syndicated newspaper column called "Looking at Language" and hosts a weekly show on San Diego Public Radio. For Lederer, language is a thing to be celebrated, and rather than adopt a critical tone or bother to chastise the illiterate he opts for lucid and enthusiastic reportage on words and their development and...

Feature by Martin Brady

As we at BookPage know, writing is hard work. But believe it or not there are techniques that can make those long hours at the computer a bit more bearable. Whether you're a best-selling novelist, a working journalist or someone who simply likes to write, the following books offer encouragement, inspiration and practical advice on improving your fiction-writing and communication skills. First...

Beetle mania rolls on

The international automotive industry has foisted many products on this car-crazy world, yet nothing has ever registered as vividly or as memorably in the public's imagination as the Volkswagen Beetle. Yes, it was small and funny-looking (some would say downright ugly), you could hardly see out the back window and traveling in a crosswind was always an adventure. But what the Beetle (or...

Up close and personal with the Bard: authors find solace in Shakespeare

What are the odds? Two major publishers release memoirs at the same time in the same year, both of which are authored by men of professional bearing who glory in Shakespeare and teach classes on the subject. The coincidences passing strange are worthy of one of the Bard's own plays. "The manuscript of an out-of-control writer is not a pretty thing to behold: sloppy, confused, slapdash,...

Up close and personal with the Bard

"The manuscript of an out-of-control writer is not a pretty thing to behold: sloppy, confused, slapdash, disjointed," writes Herman Gollob, author of Me and Shakespeare. "Out of this chaos the editor must bring order—structure, organization, coherence." Now in his early 70s, Gollob is well-known in publishing circles, having served for years as an editor at Little,...